Xiangyang Ju

Ph.D in Physics

GitHub Pages deployment

The production site is built and deployed by .github/workflows/pages-deploy.yml. Pull requests continue to run the validation-only Site CI workflow.

Deployment flow

Every push to master, and every manual workflow dispatch:

  1. installs the Ruby dependencies pinned by the repository;
  2. builds the site with strict front-matter validation;
  3. runs the route, asset, custom-domain, and Liquid smoke checks;
  4. uploads only the generated _site directory as the Pages artifact;
  5. deploys that artifact through the github-pages environment.

A failed build or smoke check prevents deployment. Deployments are serialized, and an in-progress production deployment is never cancelled by a newer push.

Publishing configuration

The repository uses GitHub Actions as its Pages publishing source. The custom domain www.ml4phys.com is configured in Settings → Pages.

For custom Actions workflows, the Pages setting is authoritative and GitHub ignores the repository’s CNAME file. The file is retained and smoke-tested as a repository invariant and to support branch-based rollback; changing it alone does not change the active custom domain.

No DNS change was required for the deployment migration. DNS must continue to point www.ml4phys.com directly to xju2.github.io, with the apex domain using GitHub Pages A/AAAA or ALIAS/ANAME records.

Verification

After a production deployment:

  1. confirm Actions → Deploy site completed successfully;
  2. confirm its environment URL is https://www.ml4phys.com/;
  3. verify the home, projects, publications, talks, and students routes;
  4. check Settings → Pages for successful custom-domain and HTTPS status.

GitHub’s DNS and certificate checks can lag behind a publishing-source change. If the site and workflow are healthy but Pages temporarily reports NotServedByPagesError, verify the DNS records and allow up to 24 hours for validation before removing and re-adding the custom domain.

Rollback

To restore GitHub’s branch-based build:

  1. Open Settings → Pages.
  2. Set Source to Deploy from a branch.
  3. Select master and /(root), then save.
  4. Revert the deployment-workflow pull request if the explicit workflow should no longer run.

Because both methods build the same master content and retain the existing CNAME, rollback does not require DNS changes.